We Pray Because We Believe
Except When We Don’t
How’s your prayer life? As Christians, don’t we privately and silently talk to God a lot? Every day? We do that because we’ve been taught, and perhaps we’ve experienced that prayer is a real contact with the Lord. He is there, He listens, and He responds. And grace-filled results happen. Prayer is a faith behavior, isn’t it. We pray because we believe.
Except when we don’t. Spiritual abuse can knock the whammy out of our spiritual life. It can knock us so completely into a different ballpark that suddenly we don’t know how to pray anymore. No, that’s not quite right. In that different ballpark, we’re in shock. In shock, WE CAN’T PRAY AT ALL. We’re in shock...spiritual shock down to our toenails. The aftermath of that abuse is frightening – or it would be if we could feel anything. But the shock also has created an emotional numbing. WE CAN’T FEEL ANYTHING AT ALL.
I know because I’ve been knocked into that ballpark. At the time, I had just learned “The Jesus Prayer,” which is an ancient breath prayer to be prayed silently and slowly with every inhalation and every exhalation. Inhale: “Lord Jesus Christ…” Exhale: “Son of God…” Inhale: “Have mercy…” Exhale: “on me a sinner.” I can tell you that when I began that breath prayer, it took over. I could hear it being prayed in my spirit, even when I wasn’t consciously thinking about it. With every breath. It seemed as though I were clinging to the cross. My arms were wrapped around Jesus’ feet and legs. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Even in the middle of the night when I turned over in bed to another position before falling into deep sleep again, there it was. The Jesus Prayer with every breath. And over time, that prayer brought me out of emotional and spiritual shock.
That’s why I have come to believe that when we are spiritually and emotionally healthy, that is the time to learn a larger practice of prayer, and then PRACTICE it. Often. I know that there are many different practices of prayer. But I want to tell you about one that the Lord showed me, called “Full-Spectrum Praying.” I recently led a Quiet Day, leading the participants through that way of praying. It includes intercession, petition, penitence, oblation, praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, all before you say Amen. (Don’t worry if you don’t know a couple of those words. I’ll explain further next week.) If we were accustomed to having a prayer practice when a spiritual trauma comes along, I believe that it would help us to find inner stability sooner, by verbally repeating the practice, even if you can’t feel anything.
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